


When The Time is Right

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [180]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Mutual Pining, Peacemaking by Marriage, betrothal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 12:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: They’re betrothed when they’re children, too young to understand.





	When The Time is Right

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: None, other than the flurry of fic I read this weekend.

They’re betrothed when they’re children, too young to understand. Loki has questions, a thousand of them, but his mother cuffs him about the ears as they enter the temple and tells him to hush.

At the altar is a boy, not much older than he. Pale eyes and pale hair. Broad shoulders and hands that shake when they clasp Loki’s, when they cling to each other’s fingers because the ritual says that they must. 

There are words spoken over them, energy summoned and sent through them, and when the ceremony is at an end, Loki is tired, his eyes as heavy as if he’d just run round the moon.

“Come, my child,” his mother says, crooning to him now, his head tucked against her breast. “You’ve done well today. Let us home.”

It’s hard to let go of the other boy. His fingers are cramped when he’s held on so tightly and he finds, more than that, that he doesn’t really want to let go.

“Father,” the pale one says, his voice urgent and hurt, “no, please! Don’t send him away!”

They’re plucked apart, though, like petals torn from the same stem, and Loki gets one last glimpse of his betrothed--wide-eyed and startled, his face sagging with a pressing need for sleep--before their touch is broken, before he sags back in his mother’s arms, a storm of tears on his face.

“You’ll see him again soon,” his mother says, the low roar of her voice tucked down to a whisper as they move away, past the doors of the temple and up again into the sky. “Soon enough, my love. When the time is right, you will know.”

Loki buries his face against his mother’s neck and sobs--why, he cannot fathom, cannot get begin to understand--until his mother takes him into the stars and he falls into a deep and trembling sleep.

 

*****

It’s many years before he understands what happened, why there was so much grief in him, after, so much petulant rage. He’d been bonded, had he not, and with a prince of Asgard, no less, without so much as a question; no one, not even his beloved mother, had asked his permission. Or at least told him in no uncertain terms what was to happen to him and why. Though as he grows older, he is able to guess:

Peace at any price, isn't that what they say? And what better price than the life of one's son?

His soul had been bound to that of the Asgardian prince, tied as surely with magic as it might have with steel or with rope, and then they had been torn asunder, separated until the knot between them could be pulled tight no longer; until they had no choice but to unite, to tie their parents' kingdoms together for so long as they both should live.

It vexes Loki, this lack of choice. And he does his best to resist.

Sometimes, in the years after, he would feel a sharp tug on his shoulder, a yank as if he were a kite on the wind, and he would spin around to see no one, only the familiar stretch of ice and sky. Other times, his hands would ache with absence, with the long-ago ghost of the prince’s grasp, and he would have to set down his spellbooks or his hairbrush or his chalice for fear of crushing them in his stiff, unyielding grip. 

And sometimes, at night, as he pillowed his head on his favorite cloak, he would hear his name murmured in a foreign tongue, a tongue that moved reverently over the soft skin of his ear:

_Loki_ _of Jotunheim. I am yours._

That voice brings him dreams, dreams of warmth and color and light, of a sense of closeness and belonging in which lay delight, and he would wake up wet and spent, his body convulsing in the presence of shadows that knew his name, that drank in the shudders of his body with pale, anxious eyes.

_Loki_ _of Jotunheim._ One last whisper, one that roused him again with a whimper. _Y_ _ou are mine._


End file.
